


Things That Live In Rooms (Elephants, Ghosts, and Bees)

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel POV, Endverse, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M, One Shot, it's endverse what else can you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is going mad. Dean is going silent. They're dying slowly, but at least they can die together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Live In Rooms (Elephants, Ghosts, and Bees)

There is a bee in the room.

It buzzes, taps. Head in the corner, Dunce-cap, wing-beats. _Tap tap tap._ Dean doesn't seem to notice. He's cleaning his guns. Strong hands, pale fingers smeared with grease. Rags and bullets. Dried blood.

_Tap tap tap._

“I'm going mad,” Castiel says.

Dean grunts.

It is the most conversation they have had all day.

Castiel's hand is tapping in time with the bee. He doesn't know why. He didn't tell his hand to do that. It just is. It is and he can't stop tapping, shifting, _pulsing._ His heart is pounding. Blood is moving under his skin. This form is never at rest, not even when unconsciousness overtakes it. Always breathing. Always. It's maddening. Literally.

He can barely see Dean in the dimness. The sun is behind clouds and the lights are off and the hovel is dark and Castiel can feel the tight seams of jeans digging into his knees and still sensations, pitifully small, pitifully mortal, overwhelm him.

Dean isn't looking at him. This is bothersome.

Why?

No answers. No reasons. It's irrational, no— _hysterical._ Castiel is going into hysterics over something as trivial as prolonged silence.

Not silence.

Numbness.

Mortal sensations are overwhelming, but so monotone. He can't see colors anymore—not brilliancy, the vibrant tones of heaven weaving radio waves into sunsets. The air is still, smoglike. The bee may buzz, but he cannot see its wings. Souls are lost to him. The textures, the _power_ of them, gone. Can't sense them. Can't remember what they looked like, now. Even has to think of it as _looking,_ as if you could see a soul with a pair of eyes, because this vessel's brain can't comprehend half of what it would take to truly _see_ a soul.

It hurts to look at them, at faces Cas knew before he Fell. Dean's face hurts most. _I dragged you out of Hell,_ Castiel could say, _but I let you trap me here. Tell me why. Tell me anything._

Dean must understand. He must look at him. Castiel unfurls from his curled crouch on his chair, placing toes on the floor. Worn wood. Possibility of splinters. Doesn't matter, but lately Castiel's become so strikingly averse to pain.

Not death. Just pain.

Madness, without doubt.

“I mean it,” Castiel says, and does. “I really am.”

Dean freezes, fingertips light on the barrel of his Colt 1911. He looks at Cas, pins him with a glance so brief and so sharp and so dismissive it creates a physical sensation in Castiel's throat.

“So?” he says. Rolls his eyes, like Cas is a child and this madness imaginary. He goes back to cleaning his guns. Castiel watches the parts come undone in his lap. Every sound is a slick-slide downwards, gutting him. Silence. _Slick slide slick._

He wants to look away, but Castiel is rooted to his perch on the edge of the chair. _His_ chair. Motheaten. Bloodstained. _His._ Dean, opposed to all impractical possessions, brought Castiel a chair, salvaged from the wreckage of the dead and damned.

Generosity? No. Only a balm for Dean's sense of guilt.

Unwarranted guilt? Maybe. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Castiel hasn't decided if he blames Dean yet.

He has decided that Dean blames himself too much.

Castiel bites his fingers into the armrests. If he does not watch his hands carefully, there will be nothing to keep them from closing the distance and snaking around Dean's skin. He wants to touch him. Perhaps to hurt him. Perhaps to still him. If Dean was still, the world might, in some way, _stop._ Just for a moment. But it would be enough.

Dean is never still. Always moving, always... somewhere else. Pulling away. Castiel is losing him. Dean is losing himself. In grief. In darkness. In a pattern of motions, well-practiced depression.

Empty bottles on the floor. Bodies between sheets.

Castiel can't reach him. Not like this. Not now, when Castiel needs Dean to reach for him. _Pull me from this. Return the favor. Please._

But Dean is lost and Castiel is gone.

What am I?

Knowledge. Gone. Consciousness. Gone. Memories. Gone.

He is gone. There is a stranger in his place. A pathetic mortal man with two bloody hands and no answers.

He will die.

He will die someday not long from now, in borrowed body in an unmarked grave, and there is no Heaven left to run to.

“Cas?”

Castiel can't answer. The world is spinning itself into circles. His eyes snap shut but the spinning gets worse in the darkness, weaving. Pain curls into his chest. He chokes.

“Damn it, Cas!”

Closeness. Castiel's eyes open and Dean is close, brilliant eyes and broken nose. Hands on Cas's shoulders. Squeezing.

“Breathe,” he says. “Out, then in.”

Cas does. Like a child, he fills the greedy space in his lungs with breath. He hadn't realized he'd stopped. Panic does strange things to him. Increased heartrate. Adrenaline. Hyperventilation.

Dean's eyes are wide and close. Green, but brown in this light. The color never seemed important when Castiel could see the imprint of the soul behind them. Now, the color is all he has to cling to.

Dean tries to take his arms away. Castiel clings on at the elbows. Clumsy but effective. Dean is frozen, nails digging black smudges onto Castiel's shirt, unable to let go. Cas's fingers tingle with the sensation of Dean's bare skin, fingerprints to freckles, pressed. He can feel his sweat, his indecision, his pulse.

Dean looks away. Cas ducks his head to follow his eyes. This is important. Dean doesn't get to look away from this.

“Thank you,” Castiel says. Barely audible, tucked into Dean's ear like a secret.

Dean's jaw is tight, teeth ground slow. “Forget it,” he mutters, as if it were so easy, as if it were so _simple._

“No,” Cas says. Fingers convulse, knifing into Dean's flesh so hard he flinches. Castiel feels no remorse.

_I'm not forgetting anything else. I am not forgetting you or your kindness. Or your brother._

Dean's eyes are so wide, and there is a tension there. Cas wonders if he said it out loud.

“It wasn't your fault,” he says. Sam is unspoken but present—a shadow in a corner, a tremor in Dean's jaw. “You didn't know. You couldn't know. None of us could.”

They are true words, easy. But Dean is pulling away.

“I'm not talking about this, Cas.” Ground-glass harsh, spat out like bullets. Best defense is good offense, of course. _Go away_ is in his posture and _shut up_ is in the eyes now fixed on the floor and Cas knows that if he were merciful, he would let Dean go. But Castiel is not—has never been—merciful. Vengeful, yes, selfish, yes, merciful, never. Angels are warriors. They do not have investment in the business of kindness.

As Dean pulls away Cas grips tight and tugs hard, so unexpectedly hard Dean lurches and almost falls into his lap. Catches himself on the armrests, staring openly. Cornered. Frozen. Frightened.

For a moment it's as if Castiel didn't Fall, as if he were still strong enough to lift Dean by the throat and toss him through a cement wall—could skewer him, divide him into pieces only for the joy of putting him back together. As if Cas were not small and cruel and bones poking sharp under starved skin, but broad and brilliant, soaring.

“Talk to me,” Cas says, orders, as if he never Fell, as if he can still speak with the purpose of Heaven and the power of his brother's singing voices in his veins. But that's little more than pretend, game-playing, something neither of them could believe for an instant. If Cas hadn't Fallen he'd have no need for Dean to _talk._ He could read everything he needed from his heartbeat and his soul. Everything else—subtlety, nuance—would seem irrelevant.

But then, if Cas hadn't Fallen, Sam would not be dead.

Less than dead. No body to burn or bury. Sam was _erased._ Swapped, one wayward brother for another. Soul broken beyond hope of repair.

Dean would not be broken—broken as he is—if Castiel hadn't Fallen. But then, Cas only Fell because Dean asked him to. Corrupted him so easily, subconsciously, with the touch of disobedience. And hope.

He sees neither in Dean now.

“Don't do this, Cas,” he growls, and it would be a threat if it wasn't just waves in the air, soft and untouchable. Cas only obeys if he wants to, now. And he doesn't want to. Not about this.

“I know you've been praying for Michael to take you,” Cas says. “Don't. It won't help. It won't—Sam is _gone_ , Dean. You can't get him back. You can't fix it.”

_Sam._ Dean's eyes shutter and close.

“Don't shut me out,” Cas says. “Dean.” He reaches up and grabs at the chin, the throat, makes Dean see him. Once, Castiel could see Dean's soul unfurl, golden, gleaming behind his eyes and layered over the freckles of his face. Now all he sees are eyes, green and dull. It hurts. But it also feels good, feels right, to be so close. To be bodies and flesh together. Two sets of lungs in the same hot air.

“What do you need?” Cas asks, the words coming out before he can stop them, consider and slow them. “I can... I...”

What? Bring Sam back? Turn back time, grow new wings, halt the beating of his heart? There's so little left in his power. He has two hands. He could bring Dean a beer. A gun. A girl. Let him drown a little more, deafen himself a little more. Numb the symptoms while the cancer spreads, claws its way down to his lungs. Dean's sorrow is a sickness on the cellular level. There is no cure.

“You kiddin' me?” Dean says, too-plastic, practiced. “Look at you. What could _you_ do for me?” The words sting not because they’re true but because Dean wants them to—wants to hurt Cas enough that he'll let go. Dean's already shaking his head. Or maybe that's a tremor in his neck. It can't be comfortable, being brought down to Cas's level by force.

“Nah, Cas,” he mutters, low and heavy. “You've done enough.”

“I haven't,” Cas says. “You won't let me. You won't let me fight with you anymore, you keep me inside—”

“You can go outside. I'm not your fucking keeper.”

Cas could snarl with frustration. It's so clear but Dean doesn’t see. Won’t see.

“I don’t want to go _outside,_ ” he spits. “I want to go with _you._ ”

“No you don’t,” Dean says, with a sound like a laugh if a laugh was depressed.

“I do,” Cas says. “I do, I—I want to help you. Tell me how to help you.”

“You’re outta your goddamn mind, Cas,” Dean says. He sounds angry, but his voice is still low, still painfully near. “You wanna help me? Help yourself. Clean up.”

“I don’t know how,” Cas says, and winces. That’s too childish, too real. The truth.

It makes Dean angry, when he shows that kind of weakness.

“Figure it out,” Dean grits out. He pulls away.

Cas stands up. Dean needs to stay close to him. “I need to take care of you,” Cas says, in the voice he’s heard mothers use with their children, soothing, soft. “That’s all I want. Just show me how. I don’t know what to do, Dean. Show me what to do.”

Dean is so close. Just freckles and eyes and cheekbones. A smattering of beautiful parts in some graceless whole. Cas can’t see the whole anymore. But there is beauty in the parts, more than in their sum—there is beauty in being so close that one loses objectivity.

Dean swallows. It is such a gorgeous motion, the slick slide down of his throat. His lips are soft and open. Cas wants them.

It’s a new wanting. A wanting angels don’t have, a—unique hunger. It pounds his heart. Speaks to the vessel Cas adopted for his own, speaks in instincts of human and sweat. Shameless and urgent and needy, it speaks. Cas goes dizzy with it.

For a long time, he didn’t know what made Dean special. But now he thinks he does. It’s so simple. Animal. Impossible.

He leans forward.

“Don’t,” Dean says. “Just—don’t.”

“Dean, I—”

Dean’s brow is folded. His cheeks, red. “Just—get out, okay?” he says.

Cas could laugh if this were funny. “Dean,” he says, “Dean, this is my room.”

“I don’t care whose fucking room it is!” Dean glares, dares. “Get out, get drunk, get laid—just. Get out of my face. I can’t—I can’t deal with this right now.”

Dean doesn’t pull away. His hands are on Cas’s arms. Jaw tight. Eyes shut.

“You don’t want that,” Cas says. “Do you?”

“Of course I—”

Cas kisses him.

Somewhere, the bee is in its corner, _tap tap tap._ But Cas doesn’t hear it. Dean’s pulse is under his hands, heavy and racing.

“ _That’s_ what you want,” Cas breathes onto his lips. “I can give it to you, I can—”

Dean shoves his tongue into Cas’s mouth. It’s angry and bitter and _sweet._ Dean tears at their clothes and it’s the same, rough like he wants to fuck up, wants Cas to shove him away.

But Cas is never going to. Cas lets Dean take what he needs. The air from his lungs, the sweat from his brow—whatever. It’s not Cas and Dean, it’s two human bodies, doing what two warm, willing bodies always do.

Sex. It feels nice, like pills do, or alcohol. Cas understands that now in a way he didn’t before. It feels nicer because it’s Dean. Cas likes Dean, likes the look of him, his pheromones and scent. He’s happy to make Dean happy, happy to pretend that this is the better than skin and friction and nerve-endings. That this is tenderness. Kindness.

Dean doesn’t have sex because it feels nice. Not really. He does it to make other people feel nice. When they feel nice, Dean feels like he’s been forgiven.

Dean wants Castiel to forgive him. But Cas can’t. He doesn’t believe in forgiveness. Life is a series of random notes on a long road downwards. The journey is your choice, but the ending’s predetermined. Why fret about a wrong turn? Just kick back, relax, and take the pills that make you think you’re flying, because flying is so, so much better than falling.

There is nothing to forgive.

But nothing will ever be forgotten.

***

When Dean goes to sleep, Cas rests his chin on Dean’s shoulder.

Sometime in the morning, Cas will wake to an empty bed, a tangle of sheets. He won't check to see if there is any warmth still clinging to them, won't bury his nose in a pillow and pretend, for an instant, that Dean is still within reach.

He will stand, open a window, breathe deep.

Perhaps the bee will fly out, then. Perhaps it will stay. Perhaps it will already be dead.


End file.
